Choralosophy

When you do music from a culture that is not your own, it is like you are holding someone else’s dreams and past in your hands. Janet Galván In this touching and vulnerable conversation, Dr. Galván and I discuss the very important issue of programming and preparing to perform music from an ever growing number […]

“To stimulate thinking you must ask questions. The instant you give YOUR philosophy, the thinking stops. What you want is for them to think for themselves.” Dr. Eph Ehly It’s difficult to describe the impact that Eph Ehly has had on the choral profession. In fact, it may be impossible to quantify. He has cultivated […]

When we stand in front of choirs, we frequently stand in front of diverse groups of humans. And yes, diverse in terms of race, gender identity, gender expression, religion and much more. But, one sometimes overlooked reality is that we also stand in front of individuals with diverse VIEWPOINTS. Diverse world views, political views, philosophical […]

A choral musician with a “marathon mindset” would never listen to a choir and think, “well, we’re done. We’ve done all we can do.” The same is true of our lives as teachers/conductors. Welcome Dr. Emily Williams Burch BACK to the show, but this time IN my home studio. A lag free conversation in which […]

As we march through what has been the most challenging semester possibly to EVER face the field of education, we find ourselves twisting our minds in pretzels to discover what works and what doesn’t work on the fly. Every day is an experiment whether you are in person with masks, hybrid or all online, you […]

When we see and hear the Aeolians perform we impressed by the technical precision. We are in awe of the dynamic range, the tone, the diction and the phrasing. But we are INSPIRED by the emotional buy-in and engagement from the singers in the ensemble. This culture doesn’t happen naturally in choral ensembles. It is […]